Case study: What’s it Like & Awaaz FM
The Communities Against Cancer (CAC) project brought together two very different organisations – Awaaz FM – A Southampton based radio station for the Asian Community, and What’s it Like? – a project from Enable Ability creating virtual videos of health settings to help reduce anxiety for those autism and/or learning difficulties.
Ali from Awaaz FM and Steve from What’s it like? had both successfully received a CAC grant to do their planned work: Ali to deliver radio programmes about cancer awareness and try to get people talking about cancer to raise awareness, and Steve’s project involved the making of a virtual video of a breast screening unit at a local hospital.
Ali & Steve’s paths crossed on the private Facebook group established recently by the CAC team. The group is designed to be a space where people in the CAC project (grant holders, supporters, health professionals) can share ideas, resources, requests for help. It is about enabling communication, partnership working and increasing the reach of the CAC project. Both Ali and Steve have been active on this group, and arranged to meet up to discuss their projects and see if they could collaborate. From this emerged a new CAC application idea! Steve would create a version of the breast screening unit video in Urdu & Hindi with the support from Ali. This project would improve reach to the South Asian community, who have a lower take up rate of screening. The CAC team have supported and encouraged this application and partnership.
The additional CAC application was approved by the grants panel and so work is now underway preparing the project. This has begun with Steve appearing on Ali’s radio programme talking about his initial video for people with learning difficulties. They also discussed some of the taboos and challenges facing the South Asian community in having conversations about cancer. This is a great start to their newly formed partnership which is sure to benefit lots of people in raising awareness of cancer and facilitating access to health services.
